


won't let this city destroy us (extracts)

by ilgaksu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: 1950s Manchester, Alternate Universe, Internalized Homophobia, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Period-Typical Anti-Semitism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Teddy Boys AU, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3197471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilgaksu/pseuds/ilgaksu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Non-linear extracts from an in-progress AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Steve was born in this city and he’ll die in this city; he knows this like he knows the Lord’s Prayer, the taste of blood in his mouth, the crush of the old tin knuckledusters against the bird-bones of his hands, thin and delicate -

Steve draws and draws and draws, charcoal bleeding all over the page. Last week he got knocked down the step for stopping the local boys breaking windows in. Steve Rogers may walk the walk but he’s not toeing the line, he may walk the walk but he sure don’t talk the - 

Bucky came screaming into this world under the wrong flag and wrong religion and wrong everything, really. He’s Jewish in a Catholic neighbourhood and his parents fled Europe in the last war, the war just gone, and they don’t talk about the places they’ve been. He loops an old bicycle chain taut around his hands and has a diehard crush on Marlon Brando they don’t talk about and they don’t talk about a lot of things they do, really.

Boys like them don’t go the places they go or do the things they do and this, the velvet jackets and drainpipe jeans, it’s an art, it’s a long con, it’s _assimiliation._ People wouldn’t get out of the way for plain old Steve and Bucky, but they’ll sure as hell get out the way of Rogers and Barnes. 

Bucky sweats blood trying not to turn out like his old man, trying to look enough of the part, trying to make his accent catch right.

Steve’s breath doesn’t ever catch right, so he sits and watches Bucky dance off the bruises, dance long and hard, dance all night, because it’s the era when angry young men are made and for the next few hot hours the world maybe could be theirs. 

*

Bucky laughs around the sweet in his mouth, curls it around _babydoll_ and the devil’s grin. Steve tells him he’s gonna choke. _I ain’t breathing the life back into you, Buck. I tell you, I ain’t, not when it’ll be your own damn fault._

_Gonna remember that next time Maloney's boys try and shove your teeth back down your neck._

Steve laughs and his laugh is golden. Bucky shields himself with his cheap Asimov paperback, the tang of the hairspray caught sour in the back of his throat. Steve isn’t a lady-killer, isn’t even close, but he shellacs his hair into place like he’s going to war, like he’ll never come back, and can you blame him, really? Tonight he’s going to ask Peggy Carter to dance with him in front of everyone they know and Steve’s as nervous as if he’s asking for her hand. The hairspray glistens, wavering in the air as his hand shakes. She’s got a harsh right hook and a bloody vixen mouth and a swirl of sugary petticoats that don’t mask the hard armoured glint of her nails. She’s a hell of a girl, and Bucky can see that, and she hasn’t ever laughed at Steve’s lungs, but -

Bucky knows the bones of him, has seen the lean of his spine through his shirt as he rushes into the fray and yet and yet and yet -

She’s lucky, he tells Steve. And Steve rolls his eyes, Steve don’t see it, but Bucky always keeps on trying. And can you blame him really?

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dreams, he is not called James.

When Bucky dreams, he dreams in Polish, he dreams in German, he dreams in Russian, _matka soldat боюсь_  unspooling over his tongue, a life given violent birth again. In the dreams, he is not called James. He runs along the streets to the department store and his fingers skip and jump over the bullet holes in their building. _Siostra stern Кто я_  and here it is Ave Maria at mass. Bucky learns the words quick, has always been fast like that, able to slip in the spaces between,  _sabat lauf не оглядывайся назад_ -

Bucky dreams about trains and cries in his sleep every time. One time he laughs and Steve asks him about it the next morning and Bucky can’t remember but he thinks he dreamt about Becca before she was called Becca, button nose in her cradle, yowling like a cat when they put her in the bath. Bucky thrashes when he dreams of the old boxing club, the itch of bandages around his fist and the reek of desire barely contained inside his skin.

Sometimes, when Bucky dreams, he dreams about falling. He jolts awake; it takes him a long time to go back to sleep. _Tęsknię do domu, ich vermisse hause, я скучаю по дому._

 

*

 

"Barnes," he says and Phillips sighs without looking up from the form.

"Ain’t you got nothing better to do on a Saturday night, kid?" he asks as he begins to fill in the form from memory alone. Bucky sees the name:  _James Buchanan Barnes_ , named for a president in the hopes it’d help their visa application to the US. It didn’t, so now they’re here. Bucky remembers: the ricochet of guns, a midnight train, chanting the prayer for the dead over and over in his mind as he handed his fake passport over to the cold-eyed guard.

"Nothing on at the picture house and they wouldn’t play my song down the road," Bucky replies, drawls it, laces it with killer disdain like cheap vodka in cola. Keeps eyes up to meet Steve’s.

Steve, next in line, leant against the corridor wall and watching, watching. Nobody looks good in shitty holding cell light, but somehow Steve manages it; he looks so sickly anyway it turns him to marble. He grins, licks the blood off his fat lip. Bucky smirks in return.  _Suits you_ , he mouths. Steve rolls his eyes.  _Jerk,_ he mouths back.

"I don’t see nothing funny about this, Barnes," Phillips tells him, bringing his attention back.

"Sir yes sir," Bucky says, and salutes. Phillips doesn’t even react by now, but the ripple of sniggers in the queue don’t ever get old.  

"You’re a bright kid and you’re back here and I’m wondering why, then. Wondering if you aren’t so clever as you think."

(There’s no word, Bucky’s decided, no word so decidedly insulting in the English lanuage as  _clever,_  with its connotations of  _too much_. _Clever_  means sticking your head up over the parapet.  _Clever_  means getting it shot right off. _Clever_ , in essence, means decapitation.)

Bucky lets the resentment wash over him, does the thing where he bites on his lip and smiles at the same time, slow and slower. He sees the breath catch in Steve’s lungs.

"I guess I got great taste," is all he says and watches Steve’s eyes flare in the fluorescent light. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translations (always in order of polish, german, russian):
> 
> mother, soldier, i’m afraid
> 
> sister, star, who i am/who am i
> 
> sabbath, run, don’t look back
> 
> i miss home, i miss home, i miss home


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You look," Natasha begins and doesn’t finish, her breath a waft of grape and sugar from the bubblegum. 
> 
> Warning for reference to a homophobic attack.

When he gets two or three drinks in him, Bucky stops feeling the bruises swell and twinge tender and defiant just under the skin. Stops feeling the tang of fear catching at the back of his throat. Stops feeling the lancing pain in his ribs when he twists Natasha in his arms and starts feeling golden. He bites his lip as he smiles at her and the blood that floods his mouth is a reminder so he swallows it down with Natasha’s vodka, lets it burn slick and oily in his stomach. 

"You look," Natasha begins and doesn’t finish, her breath a waft of grape and sugar from the bubblegum. 

"It’s stopped hurting, Nat," he tells her, grin stretching so wide his split lip stings with it. She doesn’t smile back as he spins her around, her tumble of curls flying and her eyes way too knowing. 

"You seen Steve today?" she pushes and Bucky frowns. 

"Why’s everyone keep asking me that?" 

"He’s been trailing all over the place looking for you, that’s why, and you know it, James."

Bucky closes his eyes and spins her faster instead. 

 

*

 

"Buck," Steve had said, blinking up at him from where he crouched beside the sofa-bed, dabbing away the slimy trails of blood glinting off Bucky’s hands. "How’d you get into that fight again?"

"Just the usual," Bucky muttered, keeping his eyes low to the carpet. The way they’d cornered him in the alleyway as he was taking a piss had been so stupid, so fucking textbook, that he’d almost laughed.  

"These ain’t fight wounds," Steve said, "I know these." And of course he does, Steve’s come home plastered in the shit from a defensive before, when it comes down to it sometimes all you gotta do is curl in and wait for it to pass, and they both know it and - 

"You tryna say something, Steve?"

"I’m not saying you didn’t fight back, Bucky," Steve said, then, "Tell me their names," eyes gone steely, and  _no._ They’ll tell Steve why if they don’t kick his head in first, and Bucky’ll go to the dogs before Steve knows what he thinks of in the night.  

"It ain’t nothing to be frettin’ your pretty little head about, Stevie,” Bucky had sighed. He’d been so tired. 

"This, nothing -"

"Don’t start, Steve, alright?" 

Steve puts his hand to Bucky’s face instead, drags his thumb along the ridge of his cheekbone, and under the blood and grime, under his skin, Bucky can feel his own heartbeat go skittery. He turns his face into it so his lips brush against Steve’s hand, indirect, enough to be denied, and he’d heard the hitch in Steve’s breath and -

 

*

 

"You can’t keep spinning forever, James," Natasha says. 

"I know, dollface, I know," he replies, "But ain’t it fun to try?" 

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on [tumblr](ilgaksu.tumblr.com) about teddy boys, comic book characters and how they intersect


End file.
